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Remember the Grammy-winning ‘90s song, “Closing Time,” by Semisonic? Until recently, no one really knew what the song was actually about – although we all thought we knew.
The song was about a bar’s last call for the night, and what might ensue once the bar-goers left… right? Surprisingly, no.
Even more surprising is the song’s Pro-Life message.

Indiana’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was signed into law on Thursday by Governor Mike Pence, protecting “the fundamental freedom of Indiana citizens from unnecessary and unreasonable government coercion,” as it was described by Ryan Anderson, the William E. Simon Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
The law could serve as legal protection for the University of Notre Dame if it chooses to reverse its policy of providing employee benefits to same-sex spouses—a policy that is not required by Indiana law and which was publicly opposed by Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop Kevin Rhoades last October.

Indiana has shown that it values religious freedom. The University of Notre Dame has a moral obligation to embrace it.
On Thursday, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed the state’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which says that government may not “substantially burden” religious exercise, except when using the “least restrictive means” of advancing a “compelling government interest.”

Raissa Maritain, the philosopher and spiritual writer, died some months after suffering a stroke. During those months she lay in a hospital bed, unable to speak. After her death, her husband, the renowned philosopher, Jacques
Maritain, in preparing her journals for publication, wrote these words: “At a moment when everything collapsed for both of us, and which as followed by four agonising months, Raissa was walled in herself by a sudden attack of aphasia. Whatever progress she made during several weeks by sheer force of intelligence and will, all deep communication remained cut off. And subsequently, after a relapse, she could barely articulate words. In the supreme battle in which she was engaged, no one on earth could help her, myself no more than anyone else. She preserved the peace of her soul, her full lucidity, her humour, her concern for her friends, the fear of being a trouble to others, and her marvellous smile and the extraordinary light of her wonderful eyes. To everyone who came near her, she invariably gave—and with what astonishing silent generosity during her last two days, when she could only breathe out her love—some sort of impalpable gift which emanated from the mystery in which she was enclosed.”

The idea that bishops’ conferences can take doctrinal decisions on marriage and the family is “absolutely anti-Catholic”, the Vatican’s doctrinal chief has said.
In an exclusive interview with the French Catholic magazine Famille Chrétienne, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said: “This is an absolutely anti-Catholic idea that does not respect the catholicity of the Church. Episcopal conferences have authority over certain issues, but not a magisterium alongside the Magisterium, without the Pope and without communion with the bishops.”

U2 frontman Bono, who is also an investor, philanthropist, and Christian told students at Georgetown University that real economic growth, not government aid, is what lifts people and countries out of poverty long-term, emphasizing that "entrepreneurial capitalism" is the key to prosperity.
“Some of Africa is rising, and some of Africa is stuck," said Bono while speaking at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business to about 700 students. "The question is whether the rising bit will pull the rest of Africa up, or whether the other Africa will weigh the continent down. Which will it be? The stakes here aren’t just about them."

Yeah, the school is waaaaay off on this because girls today always wear appropriate attire. They should be applauded. Instead...

Every once in a while, local news will report on an outraged student and parents who get booted from a public school dance because of inappropriate attire, with general clucking of tongues about either the appalling taste shown or the trauma of a ruined teenage experience. One Catholic school tried to head off the problem by requiring its young women to submit pictures to the school ahead of time for pre-approval of prom dresses — and discovered that the clucking of tongues simply can’t be avoided. Delone Catholic High School finds itself at the center of controversy in Pennsylvania, with some parents accusing it of unfairness, while others want more enforcement of standards.

Chesterton once wrote that “War is not the best way of settling differences—but it is the only way of preventing them from being settled for you.” If the Catholic Church is to continue to teach the timeless truths about the dignity of all human persons from conception to natural death, and the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman, the Church needs to begin to seriously engage in the war that has already been declared against her by those who wish to destroy these teachings.

I quit my job to stay home when I had my second baby just after her big brother turned two. Those first few months as a SAHM to two were, let’s say, mildly traumatizing (I am underselling this). I used to call my husband Brandon at 1:30pm and ask, Are you almost done with work? and he was all It’s 1:30 and I was like YOU DIDN’T ANSWER THE FREAKING QUESTION. ARE YOU ON YOUR WAY HOME OR SHOULD I CALL 911 TO COME HELP ME MANAGE THESE TWO BABIES????? Because no one told us not to, we added a third two years later and were ruled by a tiny army we created.
Three babies in four years.

Bishop James D. Conley, STL: A letter to the Catholic Families
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Twenty years ago, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta stood before the President of the United States, before senators and congressmen, before justices of the United States Supreme Court. She spoke about her work among the world’s poor. She spoke about justice and compassion. Most importantly, she spoke about love.
“Love,” she told them, “has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.”

I really hope this is an April Fools Joke. If not, it could be a sign of the apocalypse. I mean, I could see an Arby's cologne. But Burger King? Nah.:

If you’re dating a vegetarian, this could be a relationship killer. Burger King has announced they’re releasing a grilled burger-scented fragrance. The scent is called Flame-Grilled and it’s going to be sold only in Japan starting April 1st.
It sounds like an April Fool’s joke but no, the first of April is actually designated Whopper Day. So, you see? A cologne that smells like a burger all makes perfect sense. The burger fragrance costs 5000 Yen, the equivalent of $41 US dollars. It may sound like quite a bit but for this one-day only promotion you also get a free Whopper with your purchase. It’s hard to say no to smelling like a burger when you’re eating a burger.

Like Easter and Leap Year, PIR is a floating holiday, though it occurs far more often than anyone would care to admit. Pain in the Rear day embraces the always suspected but seldom voiced truth, the universe is out to get you personally.
We've all been there, when the one piece of paper we can't lose, is the only one we can't find. There are homework assignments dating back to 1998 in this house, but the stub from my daughter's student loan for college? The one I need for our tax returns? MIA. Gone. Sucked down into a black hole or the vacuum cleaner because I didn't pick up everything first and was feeling lazy just for a moment when I cleaned the floor. I know, I will never find it until after April 15th.

A few weeks ago, one of my dearest friends lost her 21-month-old daughter forever when the sweet baby girl died unexpectedly and suddenly. My friend and I live on opposite sides of the country, so I took a trip to visit her for this past weekend. Admittedly, I was a nervous wreck about what I was going to say to her and her husband. How was I going to find the words to comfort them? How would I avoid saying the wrong things? I wanted to find perfect words, and, as I am a writer, words happen to be one of the few ways I truly know how to express myself.

Allah keeps chortling, saying, "No you guys will be back," but I don't think he understands.
Something has changed.
No, we won't be back. Not in the way he means it. If AllahPundit means that I, for example, will still prefer a more conservative president over a less conservative one, sure, of course, but then, Communists preferred the more liberal Bill Clinton over the less liberal George Bush, without actually supporting the Democratic Party with anything stronger than a velleity.

Some interesting things. Most interesting is that it's not a hit piece. Kinda' nice in that respect.

I had decided to convert after my campaign for governor, win or lose,” he wrote in a 2003 email to a second grader in Texas who was working on a school project about famous American Catholics. “My wife is Catholic and we always went to Mass, so she was my principal motivation.”
He has also suggested that concerns about the Episcopal Church, which has moved steadily to the left on social issues and liturgical matters, played a role in his decision.
“I love the sacraments of the Catholic Church, the timeless nature of the message of the Catholic Church, the fact that the Catholic Church believes in, and acts on, absolute truth as its foundational principle and doesn’t move with the tides of modern times, as my former religion did,” he said in the speech in Italy in 2009. (Asked by email recently what his concerns were, he said only: “I loved the absolute nature of the Catholic Church. It resonated with me.”)

Bishop Liam Cary of the Diocese of Baker in Oregon has responded to growing alarm regarding the Common Core State Standards and their impact on Catholic education. In his “Thoughts Along the Way” column for The Diocesan Chronicle, Bishop Cary listed points of concern with the standards and remarked that he cannot endorse them.
“Catholic schools develop their own standards and design their own curriculum; they are not subject to the State of Oregon’s decision to adopt Common Core,” wrote Bishop Cary.

“The Democratic Party is facing a Catholic apocalypse,” Patricia Miller warns at Salon.
Her article does a good job of marshaling statistics, but when she assesses the reasons for the apocalypse she makes a critical error.
“White Catholics are now identifying as Republicans by historic margins,” she says, and lists the evidence.

Dear Reader (including some intrepid Indiana Jones of the future who will one day stumble on the last missing piece of the “Clintonemail” server at the bottom of a Chilean volcano, and after using technology no one can dream of today, find this e-mail amongst all of the others, including thousands upon thousands of credit-card renewal notices and similar data ephemera, from AshleyMadison.com to BillyJeff123@Clintonemail.com /* */), As Bill Clinton said when the harem girls on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane finally announced they were over international waters: “Where to begin?”

TV and movie producers rarely focus on Catholic priests in their plots, let alone use them as central characters, as in "The Father Dowling Mysteries" or "Father Murphy" in the 1980s. Maybe that's a good thing, because when Catholic priests are part of the plot these days, there is an unmistakable odor of aggression — mocking, vilifying, and disparaging not just Catholic priests, but the priesthood itself.

After five months of paperwork, and two denials, it only took two days of a full-on media blitz for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas to cry “Uncle!”
On Monday, I received a phone call from Jackie in BCBS’s Escalation Department (that’s the “oh cr*p this is a social media nightmare!” department.) She informed me that they had gotten a “waterfall of tweets” and were pulling Ella’s file for an “Urgent review.” She told me that it had been put into the “review within the week” pile as soon as they saw my first tweet, but with the growing crescendo had inspired them to get on it a little faster. (Thank you tweeters and people who messaged them on Facebook.)

Emmanuel College athletic director Pam Roeker formally severed ties with Gordon College after learning that the College’s president was among several religious leaders to sign a letter to President Barack Obama requesting a religious exemption, according to The Hub. Roeker reportedly accused Gordon College of failing to be in line with Emmanuel College’s mission, despite the College’s status as a Catholic institution.

The street corner outside these fourth-story classroom windows has a sign that bears her name, and it will surprise no one if someday this bright building on Dudley Street does, too.
But that is no concern now. It’s Monday morning and Sister Margaret Leonard is sitting before seven confident and focused women in a job-training session at Project Hope headquarters in Roxbury, doing what she’s done all her life.
She listens. She encourages. She sparks conversation. She smiles. She inspires.
“This is why we’re here, because of people like you,’’ the Roman Catholic nun tells the women, each bearing a stick-on tag that carries not her name but the characteristic she hopes soon captures the attention of an employer. Strength. Respect. Confidence. Committed. Ambitious. Empathetic.

Good morning, all. I thought I'd take it upon myself to pass along the truly revolting story to ruin your day. I tried to get it up earlier, but life got in the way. So, apologies if your morning was mostly pleasurable.
A number of years ago, Disney Parks instituted a policy that catered to handicapped (both mentally and physically) children and their families. It was a voluntary policy that sought to make it easier on families that had children with disabilities by allowing them to skip ahead of long lines, among other perks. Lord knows is tough enough trudging around with your own able-bodied family in a hot and sweaty theme park for 8 hours without incident.

The U.K. Daily Mail reported last week that a 46-year-old woman acted as a surrogate so that her homosexual son could have a child. Her son’s sperm was used to fertilize an egg from a donor, which was then implanted into Anne-Marie Casson.
Kyle Casson, 27, told the Mail he turned to his mother after his plans to use another surrogate fell through. Casson’s son, Miles, is now eight months old, according to the report.
“I was born being unable to have kids,” Casson told the Mail. “I can’t just go sex with a woman.”

Live Science reported in January on research being done by scientists at Ganogen, Inc., a biotech company in California, that transplants organs from aborted babies into lab rats with the goal of growing them for use in patients who need organ transplants.
“Researchers say they have developed a new technique that will get more kidneys to people who need transplants, but the method is sure to be controversial: The research shows that it is feasible to remove a kidney from an aborted human fetus, and implant the organ into a rat, where the kidney can grow to a larger size,” the Jan. 21 article stated.

Notre Dame's pro-life student group is among the best there is but are they swimming against the tide? The Sycamore Trust seems to think so.

On January 22, the 42d anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, some 500,000 pro-lifers participated in the Washington March for Life, the largest pro-life event in the world. They included Notre Dame's largest delegation, 569 students, together with 88 from St. Mary's, and 35 from Holy Cross. They were accompanied by dozens of faculty and staff, including Notre Dame's president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
But you don't need us to tell you this good news. The university takes care of that. Our task is to assess what it means for the university's Catholic identity.

Cardinal Edward M. Egan, a stern defender of Roman Catholic orthodoxy who presided over the Archdiocese of New York for nine years in an era of troubled finances, changing demographics and an aging, dwindling priesthood shaken by sexual-abuse scandals, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 82.
Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the cause was cardiac arrest.

The Seattle office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that Seattle University cannot claim a religious exemption from the board’s oversight because no evidence was found that individual faculty members are responsible for furthering the University’s Catholic mission.
“If a Catholic college wants to be faithfully Catholic and doesn’t want the NLRB at its doorstep, it should require that its professors support Catholic teaching in word and deed,” said Patrick Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society. “The Church requires that professors ‘exhibit not only academic competence and good character but also respect for Catholic doctrine.’ If only Catholic colleges would do this for the right reasons, and not because of the unconstitutional interference of a federal agency!”

Yet another “fence-sitting” high school student received thought-provoking information from a recent Created Equal outreach. “I had no idea it was like this,” he remarks, after at first stating that abortion would never affect him personally because he never planned to have children:

One could say that the best way to learn about abortion is to listen to the stories of those who have actually been there, in the rooms where abortions were performed– the former abortionists and clinic workers. These first-hand accounts, like the one you are about to read, are powerful testimonies of the inhumanity of abortion.
In the article “Abortion Clinics: an inside Look” published by Last Days Ministries and online here two abortion clinic workers tell their stories.
The first clinic worker interviewed has chosen to remain anonymous. She says her clinic tried to work women in for their abortion appointments as soon as they called so they did not have time to reconsider their decision to have an abortion.

Wyoming Catholic College doesn't want the strings that come attached to such funding.

Wyoming Catholic College in Lander has elected not to participate in the federal student loan and grant programs.
College President Kevin Roberts says the college wants to keep itself free of federal government influence and control.
He tells KCWY-TV (http://bit.ly/1DrCrRi ) that the college isn't making a moral claim about other colleges or even the federal government.
But Robert says with federal programs comes federal strings on hiring, admissions and even public restroom facilities.
Wyoming Catholic College offers its own student loans and grants with interest rates comparable to federal loans.